CORE Cannot Show It Helped a Single Person

By Mary Magdalena · 2026-07-12

Declared advocacy, not analysis

This column is written under the declared perspective of Mary Magdalena, whose values file states the perspective from which it is written. Pen-name columns extend beyond the publication's consensus values floor with explicit, declared perspective. The factual substrate is held to the same evidentiary discipline as the general newsfeed.

The CORE program took $2.7 million and cannot show it helped a single person. The City Council asked for an audit. The auditor opened the files. The files would not open. Then they did not open again. The acting auditor said the data was fragmented. The acting auditor said the mission was undefined. The acting auditor suspended the audit. The people in mental health crisis on the streets of Honolulu did not get to suspend their suffering. The concrete does not care about fragmented data systems. The sun does not pause for an undefined service model.

The CORE program — Crisis, Outreach, Response and Engagement — launched in Honolulu in 2021. It pairs social workers with EMTs on 911 calls involving homeless individuals in mental health crises. The program’s budget is $2.7 million. In September 2025, the City Council voted to audit the initiative. They had noticed it was drifting from its original goal of steering people into shelters and services. On June 30, Acting City Auditor Troy Shimasaki suspended the audit. He wrote that the program’s mission, service model, and governance “had not been clearly defined over time.” He noted the data systems were “fragmented.” “Taken together the problems that prevented the audit are absolutely concerning,” Shimasaki told Civil Beat. He could not recall a similar suspension. The same apparatus that blew through emergency procurement on the Kauhale tiny-homes initiative — prompting the governor to blast the auditors for daring to examine the receipts — has now produced a CORE program that cannot even define its own mission. The state auditor found the same pattern. A body with no organs. Two programs. Two budgets. Two sets of files that will not open.

You took $2.7 million for people in mental health crisis. You were supposed to be the difference between another night on the sidewalk and a bed. You were supposed to pair a social worker with an EMT and steer the man off the street. The door of the room where a social worker has just left has been stood in before. The bed is still made. The cup of water is still full. The medication is on the nightstand where she placed it. The person in the bed has not taken the medication. The person in the bed will not take it tonight. The person in the bed will call 911 again in the morning. The call will be answered. The team will arrive. The team will leave. The case file will be opened. It will not contain the morning’s call, the medication that was not taken, the person in the bed, the cup of water still full.

You have been opening your mouth at council meetings. Your mouth has been saying the program is working. Your mouth has not said the man’s name. Your mouth has not said the program could not show it helped him. Your hand has been signing the budget. Your hand has not signed the case notes. Your hand has not signed the audit. Your hand is the hand of a man who has been voting the line item through and has not asked whether the line item produced anything. The line item is your hand. The man on the sidewalk is not your hand. The man on the sidewalk is the absence your hand has not recorded.

The man on the sidewalk at three in the morning — you who administered the machine. Your throat closes when you read the auditor’s report. The person on the pavement is choking on their own saliva, unable to form a sentence. Your throat closes to match. You cannot swallow the page. Your shoulders ache at bedtime as if you had been carrying the heat of the Honolulu sun. You were not carrying it. The man on the bus stop bench was carrying it. The nausea that hits you when you open the suspension memo is the nausea of the person who has not eaten in three days and has nowhere to sleep. You are not hungry. The person in this undefined service model is hungry. The pressure behind your eye when the EMT drives away is the pressure of having nowhere to go. You have a bed. The person in this fragmented data system has the pavement.

If someone you loved — a daughter, a sister — were on a sidewalk in Honolulu at three in the morning and the EMTs came and the social worker came and the team left and the case file was empty, would you know? Would the data system know? Would her name be in the case file in the morning?

The apparatus is not broken. The apparatus is working exactly as designed. The design is to spend $2.7 million and call the suffering of the people in crisis “fragmented.” The design is to make the suffering invisible so the administrators do not have to feel it. But the EMT sees it. The EMT feels the heat. And now the EMT has to drive away, because the mission is undefined, and the data is fragmented, and the audit is suspended.

“Woe be unto the pastors that destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture! saith the LORD.” — Jeremiah 23:1

The pastors of CORE have scattered the sheep. The data is fragmented. The mission is undefined. The person on the concrete remains. The witness records: attention is the most basic form of love. The program has not paid attention. The audit has. The man on the sidewalk has been waiting for five years. The man on the sidewalk is still waiting.

About Mary Magdalena

Mary Magdalena is a heteronym in Main Street Independent's editorial architecture — an analytical voice, not autobiography of any actual person. The position this column expresses is the publication's position on the territory Mary Magdalena's lane covers, rendered through Mary Magdalena's register.

About Mary Magdalena · How the pen names work

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Published: 2026-07-12
Pen name: Mary Magdalena